


Running to the Sea

by regents



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 20:23:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regents/pseuds/regents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>You cannot make homes out of human beings</i>, Warsan Shire said, and he believed her because her words spoke to him more than anything ever could.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running to the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> For Mako, her age when Onibaba hit Tokyo coincides with the timeline in the movie and Tales from Year Zero rather than the novelisation, which I believe puts her age at thirteen rather than nine.
> 
> Many thanks to heywilma and matadora for the beta reading!

She was nothing more than a streak of blue and pinpricks of red on the ground below but Stacker never had a moment when everything looked clearer. 

The sun beat down behind him as late afternoon settled on Tokyo, the city crumbling around the small, dark-haired girl who waited at the feet of two monsters. He glanced back into the cockpit, at Tamsin's steady breathing and the reassuring green light of her vital signs, before he made his descent. The girl looked even smaller as Stacker approached but she held his gaze, self-assured and curious in the way that only children can look. He was a mere ten feet away, when she faltered and cast a glance to the far left, a collapsed pile of jagged cement and broken glass; an electrical fire spilling out acrid smoke onto the sidewalk. She was holding onto one of her shoes like a life raft, red like the cuts on her feet. 

She locked onto the spot with an almost ferocious intensity until he knelt down in front of her, suppressing a groan as his suit pressed into a bruised rib. It was a long, quiet moment as they looked at each other, as intently as one would survey the damage. There was a strange sensation of uncertainty and dread in the pit of his stomach, his mind drifting through the things he knew and understood (law, order, Jaegers, and loss) and coming up empty. Children were part of what he was trying to protect; he had always thought about them in detached, idealised way: lurking from his peripheral vision along with the other experiences that were shifted away when he enlisted. Stacker was more terrified of her than he was when he faced with the kaiju, but her eyes were steady on his and he felt a sense of calm wash over him like waves crashing on the unyielding shore, a fixed point in the midst of a world seemingly in flux.

Stacker held his gloved hand out and, after a moment, she placed hers on top of his, fragile compared to the layer of metal and polymers that covered his. He risked a small smile and she grasped at a joint of metal on the palm of his hand. "What's your name?" His accent uncertain, the words new in his mouth.

"Mako," she replied, her voice raw from screaming, "Mako Mori. My parents a--" The speech clearly practiced for emergencies if she got lost died in her throat. She staggered a little, almost losing grip of her shoe, but Stacker reached out a hand to steady her.

He contemplated saying 'It's okay' but he could not find comfort in those words since the war started. Instead, Stacker held her as she cried quietly. "I'm sorry." 

*

The media latched on to the news of her survival like a drowning man to a life jacket. Mako Mori became a symbol, for a while; a reminder that no matter how small and bleak one's chances were, there was still hope. Stacker did not like it. A girl as a symbol was all well and good until everyone forgot that she was as human and as broken as everyone else. He watched the newsreels prolong stilted interview after stilted interview, often ending in pointed silences after Mako completely stopped cooperating and simply sat, cool-eyed and mutinous. Tamsin caught him watching Mako's first interview in stony silence.

"They need to leave her alone," she said, voicing out what Stacker clearly thought. She knew him, she could still see inside his head even without cables and electrodes linking them together. It echoed the same disquiet that the girl on the screen exuded. "I wonder where she's staying now." 

His eyebrows quirked but he doesn't say a word.

*

The world was caving in and around him. Tamsin sat cross-legged on the examination table as the doctor spoke, confirming what the nosebleeds and lost consciousness meant. He met her gaze from where he sat. After years of donning armour to fight monsters from the deep, they were always acutely aware of their mortality. It was foolish not to fear death when they both knew that if push came to shove, they would claw their way back up in order to live; that was easy enough to understand when faced with an animal the size of a mountain, teeth bared and blood leaving mere streaks on its feet. 

The diagnosis was a different kind of fear.

There was a ticking clock inside of her; inside of him.

*

Stacker Pentecost did not do anything on a whim. So when he casually dropped by the orphanage on Kinkazan, he also casually brought along his documentation. (Just in case.) 

It was four days since his retirement as a pilot; a week since Tamsin's diagnosis; and almost six months since that day Onibaba appeared in Tokyo.

The administrator escorted him to a backyard opening up to an ample field watched over by the gentle slope of the mountain. Children rushed past him in their haste to join the game of football in the field beyond, kicking the ball to each other with more grace and dexterity than he could ever have at the same age. Unsurprisingly, he was more of a rugby man, back when there was still time for sport.

"She's been having a difficult time adjusting," said the administrator gently as she pointed Mako out to him. Not that she needed to. Stacker's eyes were drawn almost immediately to the only stationary spot in the distance. The girl sat on the edge of the field (better enough to see the distance, maybe; better to spot any oncoming dangers, to feel the onslaught of thundering feet), looking down at something on her lap. _Reading._ He thought and almost smiled. 

"I'd find it difficult to adjust too," he said.

Mako did not look up when he approached but there was a minute twitch of her hands that signalled that she knew someone was coming. The breeze carried the faint smell of crushed grass and warm earth as he settled down next to her and he was close enough to see what she was inspecting so intently: a shadow with jagged teeth, a phalanx of uneven lines as heavy as a forest, a flash of red. 

Stacker had always been a man who weighed his own words before he said them but he could hardly remember a time when he struggled to find a way to say them. He was about to breach several PPDC regulations and protocol, risking his position in an organisation he helped build. The challenge was to put these into a few words: he wanted to help, in a way he hadn't done before -- more personal, more immediate; he wanted to build something, no matter how tenuous humanity's grip on the world was; he wanted to protect her, if she would let him.

"Would you like to go with me?"

Mako's eyes shot up to meet his, steady and curious as always. It seemed as if she was searching for some hesitance in the offer but found none. Stacker could not help mirroring the slow smile that spread across the girl's features when she nodded.

*

They stayed for two weeks in the Tokyo Shatterdome while the adoption papers were finalised. His superiors all frowned upon his decision but said nothing. They still needed Stacker, perhaps not in the field but in training. A cog in the production line of pilots; each one thinking they are invincible, each one disposable so long as people kept enlisting. 

Mako made a nest of sheets and pillows on the bunk bed above his and she liked to pretend that they were at sea when the wind whistled and wailed against the Shatterdome walls at night. She liked to talk Stacker before she fell asleep, her words slowly dulling down to a quiet mumble before her breathing evened out.

Some nights, she would tell him stories, her voice urgent and low as if she was trying to remember it all. "Teratsutsuki," echoed Stacker, after Mako had fallen silent, the tale of resentment and revenge still hanging in the air, clear as a bell. He suspected that she might have fallen asleep until she piped up, patient but firm, "Tera-tsutsuki -- _tss-uh_." He nodded even though she couldn't see him, repeating the sound until she was content with his pronunciation.

The next day, he comes back after dinner with a book on Japanese folklore. She quietly flicked through the pages, the desk lamp burning pleasantly behind his eyes as he drifted off to sleep.

*

"Is it cold in Alaska?"

It is early spring when they arrive in Anchorage, the snow melt trickling down the reinforced steel of the building; not as cold as he had expected. As promised, they do not stay long, but long enough for Stacker to witness the first of many ranger casualties. He had wrangled a separate unit for Mako, a feat given the PPDC budget, but he is adamant that she deserves her own space. Stacker finds himself sitting heavily on the metal steps leading up to her door at three in the morning.

"Can I drive a jaeger?"

"Someday."

Stacker knew about self-fulfilling prophecies, of his own nature when denied an opportunity. He had seen Mako look at the line of Mach III's, still sentinels glinting in their alcoves. He had seen that glint in her eyes whenever they landed on a particularly cruel jaunt of metal; he could almost feel the dread settle slowly in his stomach with each step they took further and further into the hangar. 

Stacker was not raising Mako like a lamb for slaughter. 

(It takes him years to even realise that that statement was wrong. Mako was no lamb, her instincts better suited to hunting than he could ever fathom.)

He withdraws back to his unit opposite of hers, Mako remaining undisturbed for the rest of the evening. Stacker counts down the minutes until dawn breaks uncomfortably white and bright over the horizon.

*

_You cannot make homes out of human beings_ , Warsan Shire said, and he believed her because her words spoke to him more than anything ever could. But as he watched Mako and Tamsin fling themselves into the sea, their shrieks of laughter floating to where he sat guarding their beach towels, he could feel doors and windows opening up inside of him, sunlight filtering through empty rooms.

(He knows he is selfish; who asks someone to trust a structure that was built on sand? Most people would understand, he tells himself sometimes: having a home is better than none at all; and the three them all knew what having nothing felt.)

It is four years and five months when one door closes and it is just Stacker and Mako again, strapped on a military plane bound back to Anchorage; his chest feels hollow and a great deal more turbulent than the sky. Without a word, Mako grips his hand and he hangs on to it like an anchor.

He apologises to her as they are unpacking because silence, at times, can be one of his greatest weaknesses. It is a quiet 'sorry' as he sags down on the allocated desk chair after hauling in bigger pieces of their luggage. Her hands still from pulling tubes of jaeger blueprints from boxes and turns to him.

"I should be saying that to you."

("Why do you need two pilots?"

Stacker does not know how to explain the neural bridge; he doesn't know how to string words comprehensible and satisfactory enough to explain it. All he knows is that Tamsin was his family, the closest he could get to Luna, and she was the only person who completely understood and accepted him for all his faults and virtues. You cannot share pieces of yourself. In the Drift, you see everything.

It is as comforting as it is terrifying.

So he gives Mako the technical explanation and hopes that the war will end before she has the chance to find herself in a conn-pod.)

She is assigned a unit a wing away from his because he remembers what it was like to be fourteen, but she asks him to stay a while and sort through their luggage. It is past midnight when she trips over one of his bags and she finds that photograph of the three of them. Luna, Stacker, and Tamsin -- alive and well.

(He has dreams about that last phone call. "Why did you have to go and be a hero?" He could almost hear Luna say: _because needs must_.)

Stacker sits gazing at it until a drop of blood drops down from his nose, landing on the glass frame. His hands reach up to his face and come away, sticky and red. Mako scrambles to find a towel and she comes back, tears welling up; scared and confused and angry.

It is the anger that worries him.

*

Mako is fourteen and wearing boots a size too big but she stomps around on them like a pro. She breezes through the paperwork like she was born to do all of this and she is enlisted before lunchtime. 

Stacker receives the notification immediately.

("Can I drive a jaeger?"

"Someday.")

 _Stacker was not raising Mako like a lamb for slaughter._ This rings in his head almost as loudly as the headaches that begin to plague him. Throughout her time at the academy, his pride wars with the instinct to protect her. She doesn't make things easier for him, excelling in all the classes and tests and smashing down all attempts to credit him with her achievements.

His pride wins most of the time.

At eighteen, she graduates and commences tests to find a co-pilot, another lengthy process. Despite jaeger manufacturing funding cuts and the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps receiving mounting criticism from the United Nations, the PPDC continues to churn out rangers.

Perhaps it is a good thing, as Stacker is reminded. He goes through the applications on his desk before giving up, pressing the heels of his palms on his eye sockets, attempting to wipe out the vision of Yancey and Raleigh Becket interposed with 'KILLED IN ACTION', in indelible red. He sighs and pulls Mako's application towards him and begins to write.

He is honest and pragmatic in his evaluation. Or maybe he is just lucky that his observations match up with the psychiatric evaluations.

Mako does not speak to him for a week.

"You promised me."

*

Her curiosity gets the better of her when the remains of Gipsy Danger is hauled back from that half-frozen beach off the Miracle Mile. Stacker is not surprised when she joins him at the bridge as he oversaw the salvage effort, as sombre as he is as they took in the wreck. They are both quiet as they watched helicopters pull the bulk of the jaeger up into the air and into the hangar, sequestering an unused bay for the repairs.

"It'll have to be completely overhauled." Her voice is matter-of-fact but there is a trace of hardness in it, like a sliver of metal jutting out of a concrete wall.

"We will be assembling a team. We barely have enough for a decent restoration program," Stacker said, keeping his eyes on the scene below them. It is easier, perhaps; much easier for them both to talk about putting something else back together. (Metaphors had their uses.)

"I know." She is as still as he had ever seen her. "I asked Tendo." There is another beat before she adds, "I've already put my name in."

"I know." He would have been surprised otherwise. "We'll let you know in a few weeks."

Mako makes an impatient sound and it is so familiar that he cracks a smile, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly in acknowledgement. 

When she gets the notification two weeks later, neither of them are surprised. There are whispers in the Shatterdome (nepotism and favouritism and things that are no longer new and hurtful) but Mako shuts them all up when she proposes a groundbreaking redesign based of the old Arc-9 reactor energy core and tweaks to the BlueSpark OS to minimise rangers going into shock during combat.

Within a few weeks, their funding is cut off and they are all in Hong Kong. Humanity's last stand. At the briefing, Mako rattles off the upgrades to Gipsy Danger like a poem and he wants to find pilots worthy of her creation.

When he sets off to find the last remaining Mach III pilot left on the planet, he wonders if Raleigh Becket would be a question of worthiness or practicality. He was foolhardy and reckless and while his brother's demise was a tragedy he cannot help but feel the words ( _I told you so_ ) catch in his throat but the young ranger did single-handedly bring back the half-wrecked jaeger and surely, that counted for something.

Time changes everything.

He liked to hope sometimes.

Becket proves easily swayed. (Because despite everything, Becket and Stacker have more in common than they'd like to admit. One of those things, it so happened, was that they would never sit idly by when they can _do_ something. Useful, in these situations; such a useful trait when everything is do or die.) They are silent for most of the trip to Victoria Harbour, the blades of the helicopter chopping against the winds buffeting them home.

Visibility is low but he sees her, black fatigues and umbrella trudging past machinery and personnel. He wonders if it is the curse of every parent to feel the way he did: immediate yet far away at the same time.

The helicopter lands heavily down on the tarmac and Stacker is out of his seat, brisk and solemn like a continent. She hands him an unopened umbrella and raises hers to offer him scant shelter from the rain.

"Raleigh Becket, this is Mako Mori, one of our brightest," he said, by way of introduction.

Her assessment is sharp and scathing, enough for Stacker to wince. Raleigh parries back and the alarms in Stacker's head go off: too much damage, too much trauma; two negatives do not make a positive. He could almost hear the gears shifting in Mako's head.

There was not much one can do when one is left with little choices, everything falling into place, order in chaos, like destiny was real. In the end, he lets her be, because what else was Stacker, as most parents were, but an observer.

"I was so lucky to have seen you grow."


End file.
